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Hey dakka, I though I'd let people here know about a new website thats currently underway, called Miniature Bids.
Its an auction site similar to Ebay, but without the ridonkulous charges for listing stuff, and dedicated purely to wargaming.

Feel free to give it a look see if it interests you

http://miniaturebids.com

is this a site you just happened across or are you affiliated with it?

I don't trust a site that requires cookies or boots you to Google.

This is the second miniature bids thread to appear today, the other is in Dakka Discussions. Seems a bit suspect to me

 HisDivineShadow wrote:
I don't trust a site that requires cookies or boots you to Google.

its a requirement for UK (EU?) based websites, if you've ever been on the forgeworld site you've had a similar popup to deal with

 HisDivineShadow wrote:
I don't trust a site that requires cookies or boots you to Google.

Most sites do it, few ask you about it.

Link to mediocre blog with interview
It's something from the guy behind Tor Gaming. I think he gets a bit optimistic in scheduling releases etc. but he does come through and I can't for the life of me imagine him playing sockpuppets.

Yeah, pretty much every website uses cookies in the UK, even good 'ol GW.

And I'm not affiliated with the company personally, but I do sell a lot of custom miniatures on ebay, so when I came across this site I thought it could be worth looking into, hence the share for other sellers on Dakka.

So far I've listed one thing on there as a tester, but if the site picks up, I'll probably swap over from ebay as their listing fees seem a fair bit less than Ebay's.

Here's their FB page as well. I'm hoping its not a hoax, but at the moment, its looking legit.

https://www.facebook.com/miniaturebids?fref=ts

It does not seem to be a bottom feeder website (one that places it's face on top of Ebay), and seems to be it's own stand alone auction site... I checked several auctions on there's & ebay, and they were only on there's....

Paypal only = not interested.

 scarletsquig wrote:
Paypal only = not interested.

Paypal does protect the buyer & seller though... BUT, if they want to stand out from Ebay, they should allow sellers to take other payment options & even trade.... That'd be nice.

 scarletsquig wrote:
Paypal only = not interested.

Really? I only ever use Paypal.

 Vallhemn wrote:
Yeah, pretty much every website uses cookies in the UK, even good 'ol GW.

Every modern site uses cookies. The only difference is that in some countries they are obligated by law to tell you about it.

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 Vallhemn wrote:
Yeah, pretty much every website uses cookies in the UK, even good 'ol GW.

Every modern site uses cookies. The only difference is that in some countries they are obligated by law to tell you about it.

Ah right, I didn't realize that there were still countries that didn't tell you about it
The more you know!

You all apparently half read.

I understand cookies. I understand EU requires permissions.

I don't trust a site that requires them or it redirects you off.

Cookies are not required. We had internet before cookies.

 HisDivineShadow wrote:
We had internet before cookies.

Websites are a little more complicated than they were back then, though. Cookies are often required on sites like the one linked to track session information. Not for any malicious purpose, but simply to make the site function correctly as you browse..

 HisDivineShadow wrote:
You all apparently half read.

I understand cookies. I understand EU requires permissions.

I don't trust a site that requires them.

So you don't trust 99.9% of the internet?

I often wonder why people don't like cookies - I know they get a lot of bad press in the media that doesn't understand them but really the Internet would not function without them.

Lets take internet shopping - without storing what you have put into your basket (which requires a cookie) then the only way to do this would be to make you pay for each item every time you clicked "buy" - the logistics of sorting out shipping when doing this make it inpractical.

Looking at my cookies folder right now I have 632, a quick look at the list shows that roughly 95% are for sites I use a lot, either storing my passwords so that I have a smoother browsing experiance or for various stores that require it for the shopping basket to work - plus the obvious google one that helps them display search results that I actually wanted. Of the other 5% these are advertising tracking cookies.

The only bad thing I have ever heard about cookies is the idea of advertising tracking cookies - that watch what you do and then display adverts that are tailored to what you are interested in. Since the adverts appear on the page either way I personally quite like that they might be something I am in any tiny way interested in rather than just being random stuff that I have no interest in, I have even a couple of time got a good deal as a result of this.

I'm not saying that you are wrong to not like cookies - each to their own and all that - but they are vital to make the internet function as they do and I imagine if you took the time to review your cookie folder you would find a lot more in there than you might imagine.

As for Miniaturebids dumping you to google if you don't accept their cookies. My guess would be that any page of the site would add a cookie so if you don't agree they have to dump you somewhere (remember that this is the law here in the EU, not something they are choosing to do). I suppose they could have spent the time coding to send you back to the site you started from - or built a "sorry, you didn't accept cookies so all you can see is this blank page" page, but it was probably easier to shift them to google. Not ideal I admit, but something I find I can easily excuse.

All in all I like the idea of Miniaturebids, there are a few problems with the platform (the inability to set different international and local postage being a big one) but any system that cuts out the 10% fee of eBay (and lets not forget they now take 10% of your postage cost too) meaning that us gamers should, in theory, be able to buy things 10% cheaper has got to be a good thing and I wish them well - I may even upload a couple of things onto there myself.

The only downside to the system that I am seeing at the moment is the fact that - since listing at all prices is free - people tend to price items quite high. My guess is they are of the mentality that they want £15 for it so start the listing at that. Whilst good in principle people also use auction site to "grab a bargin" so the lack of items on a low price may mean that buyers are put off and they start to look elsewhere (eBay) - once this starts to happen it is the death of a site like this.

If I was something to do with miniature bids (and I'm not) I would do 2 things quite quickly - 1) fix the international shipping fees and 2) add a "reserve price" setting, this will incourage people to start an auction at a low price knowing that they don't have to sell it that low if they don't want to, but also encourage buyers to put a bid in too. This may already exist, but I didn;t find any auctions using it so I'm guessing not.

Hmm, I visited the site yesterday (only viited dakka and there) and seemed to have picked up a blackhole virus as per my AVG antivirus.

Seemed like a good site but I'm not chancing it again.

It's put on by tor and Chung from the WGC (or at least he's endorsing it.)

Hi all,

I'm Gavin, the man behind Tor Gaming and also this venture. I thought I would pop on and just post a quickish) umm, post!

I know I'm just a written word on a screen so you have no reason to believe what I say but I can assure you, the site is real, it is not a ebay cover type site and there is nothing 'dodgy' about it.

The reason we started the site is purely because the hobby deserves better than being ripped off by EBay. It seems no one else was going to do it (maybe they were and we just beat them too it, who knows) but at the end of the day the hobby needed a much better cost effective way for miniatures to be sold by gamers to gamers.

One of the key points of the idea was that the site HAD to be free to base users. If someone wants to sell their unwanted miniatures, they should be able to do so with out having to pay up front and fear the slice of the pie being taken away afterwards. That was a hard line drawn in the sand that we would not step over.

Many questions have been asked elsewhere about the ideas behind the site and the biggest so far is linked the free side of the site: 'How it will be sustained going forward if we are allowing free listing and selling'.

Well, to put it simply, the idea of the site is for the everyday wargamer to be able to sell their unwanted stuff FOR FREE. However, the site WILL be monitized but that will not be through charging to post an action or taking a cut of your sales value. That will never change and I give you my guarantee on that.

We have a two stream plan for funding the site. The first is already in place and that is banner advertising. The second is to introduce subscription packages that will cater for the serious seller and the retailer. These packages provide additional features on the site (such as WYSIWYG editor, featured item status, store front etc etc) but there is no need to take one of these packages if you are happy with the current functionality. The cheapest of these packages (That give the WYSIWYG Editor, featured auctions and bulk relisting of items) will be a whopping £2.50 per month. That's cheaper then a pint in many places!!

The second most question that we have heard is 'Why would I sell on there when I won't get protection like I do when selling on EBay'. Well, this is a misunderstanding. BECAUSE we use PayPal as the payment gateway to handle the payment between the buyer and the seller, both parties benefits from PayPals Protection. This is the same protection that you enjoy when using PayPal on Games Workshop's store or Domino's Pizza!

The payment is processed on PayPal's site too, which means Miniature Bids handles NONE of the actual money during the transaction. The money goes straight from the buyer to the seller. Huzzar.

Sorry if the post is a bit long but I'm very keen to ensure there are no misunderstandings and so am more then happy to answer questions.

I'll answer the points in this thread directly now.

HisDivineShadow wrote:I don't trust a site that requires cookies or boots you to Google.

Hi HisDivineShadow,

Sorry you have had a back experience with the site and cookies. I can completely understand your point of view on this. The booting to Google does seem a little harsh. As others have said, we are required by EU law to inform you about cookies. But we don;t have to stop you using the site, all we need to do is collect passive confirmation. As such, we have changed the system so you are now present with the following message:



This is enough to comply with the directive and means we are no longer redirecting you off the site.

scarletsquig wrote:Paypal only = not interested.

Hi Scarletsquig,

We use PayPal because of the protection if offers the users. It's a system that is used by many many people but I also understand that some people don't use it. We will look into other gateways too to see if we can offer a choice to the users.

Stranger83 wrote:
If I was something to do with miniature bids (and I'm not) I would do 2 things quite quickly - 1) fix the international shipping fees and 2) add a "reserve price" setting, this will incourage people to start an auction at a low price knowing that they don't have to sell it that low if they don't want to, but also encourage buyers to put a bid in too. This may already exist, but I didn;t find any auctions using it so I'm guessing not.

Hi Stranger83,

Thanks for the feedback.

We have plans for these features. In fact, we are being completely open about the development plans of the auction site and have a page on the site that lists the development queue and shows what we are actually working on. You can find it here

We also have a page that talks about the psychology of an auctions and how to make the best of it. There will be a link to this page on the auction creation page to try and encourage people to not open auctions so high. You can find that page here

455_PWR wrote:Hmm, I visited the site yesterday (only viited dakka and there) and seemed to have picked up a blackhole virus as per my AVG antivirus.

Seemed like a good site but I'm not chancing it again.

Hi 455_PWR,

I'm so sorry to hear you feel you got a virus from the site. I was very concerned when I first read this but I can assure you the site is Malware free. We take the security of the site very importantly and the security of our visitors computers even more!

The site is monitored and secured by Suruci. You can find all the details about the sites protection, including the PayPal protection, in this page.

You can see that Suruci really have us covered. But you don't have to take my word for it. here's their report: https://monitor13.sucuri.net/verify.php?r=3671e41c99fee795ad0846c4bfbf6792ac57281136

And that report is available at any time by clicking the Sucuri Verified seal on the first link I gave you.

Tor makes some good points. Even if while reading it I kept thinking of Thor with a speech impediment. I use ebay only because that's where a lot of bits are, I pay with PayPal for the protections. I don't think ebay itself is worth a 10% cut of my selling price.

I like what i hear (or read). Not that I have much motivation to sell or justification to buy, but I'll check it out.

Hi Gavin, some great points there. Personally I dont see why anyone has any problems with PayPal or cookies but hey different strokes and all that. I actually put up some studio McVey models up when the site went live, apart from not being able to review my auction before it went live it was really simple to use. I will post here how well the tranaction goes (if they sell for there cheap cheap price :(). I also have bids on for other items as well so I'll post here again about how well the transaction goes if I win them.

Definitely peaked my interest. I will be browsing the site when I next decide to expand my collection or when the fabled time only known as the clearout happens! It is said that at the time of the great clearout all the forgotten miniatures and half started projects will be shrouded in bubble wrap, placed in a sarcophagus of pure cardboard and whisked away by the gods (parcel force) to the next life. Some say there may even be paint!

overtyrant wrote:
apart from not being able to review my auction before it went live.

Hi overtyrant

Thanks for listing and bidding on items! I'm very glad you're giving it a go!

One of the links I posted earlier (this one in fact) is for our development queue. We have the Auction Preview feature on that list in the current work queue. That means if we can crack it, it will be live soon.

Just something I thought people may be interested in....

We are trying to get sponsored months goin on MiniatureBids.com where the people who use the site to buy and sell get entered into a draw to win some cool stuff.

https://miniaturebids.com/win-with-miniaturebids/